Sweet Surrender

“This no sugar diet is going really well,” I said to my brother. “I think I’m going to keep it up past January. Maybe I’ll do no sugar from Monday to Friday but allow myself a treat on the weekend.”

“If you eat sugar on weekends then you might as well just move to sugartown and marry the marshmallow man. It’s all or nothing,” he said.

“IS THE MARSHMALLOW MAN AVAILABLE?!”

I was joking, but deep inside I was hurt. As if I’m not able to have the occasional piece of pie without falling into some sugar-coated downward spiral. As if I don’t have a modicum of self control. As if.

So, to recap, I gave up all sugar (except for the naturally occurring sugar in fruit and the small amount found in things like bread) for a limited time as a New Year’s resolution. I didn’t have a single dessert, candy or treat after January 1st. I didn’t have a muffin, pancake or piece of toast with jam. I didn’t have a cup of yogurt or honey-sweetened granola, for fuck’s sake. AND IT WAS FINE.

Until.

We were celebrating my father-in-law’s birthday on Saturday night and my mother-in-law made his mother’s “famous coffee cake.” It’s just a simple coffee cake, but she hasn’t made it for well over a decade and I’ve never tried it. I supposed a small bite wouldn’t hurt; just a taste, really, of my husband’s heritage. There’s nothing more important than family, right?

So I did. I cut off the smallest corner and popped it my mouth. It was good: light, moist, not too sweet. No harm done. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.

The next thing I knew, I was clearing the remainder of Irene’s giant slice of coffee cake into the kitchen and popping just one more small taste into my mouth. Then I was standing at the kitchen counter and that’s when things got a little fuzzy. I seemed to have gone into some sort of coffee cake inhaling trance and when I came to the plate was empty and there were crumbs down my shirt.

I pulled myself together. It was okay. I was going to start allowing a bit of sugar on weekends anyway. It was Saturday, after all, and January was practically over. I could recover from this. No big deal.

And then yesterday. Oh, the shame. It was still the weekend, you see, so I might as well start the day with some granola and vanilla yogurt.  I’m not sure exactly what happened after that but it involved granola bars and stale-ass peanut butter cookies, and ended with me buying marshmallows to go with the Rice Krispies that were on sale.

Less than 24 hours after my first taste of sugar in almost four weeks, I was whipping up Rice Krispie squares for only the second time ever in my life. I married the marshmallow man, basically.

But it was still the weekend!

Never mind. I just scarfed down a banana chocolate chip muffin. Oh god.

Image credit.